Some 15% of 15-69 year olds who worked in the year ending February 2002 changed their employer and/or their locality of work at least once according to figures released by the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) today. This proportion has remained steady over the last four years, with 14% changing their employer and/or locality in the year ending February 1998 (16% in 2000).

Almost one in five (18%) people who were job mobile, changed the locality of their work without changing their employer.

People aged 20-24 years recorded the highest levels of job mobility (26%).

Of those people who changed jobs during the year, the proportion of people changing locality but remaining with the same employer or business increased with age. For example, 11% of 20-24 year olds who changed jobs only changed their locality, compared with 27% for 45-54 year olds.

Of the 8,240,300 people who were working in both February 2001 and 2002, 85% had been in their current job for one year or more, 10% had changed their job but not their occupation, and 5% had changed both their job and their occupation. Of those people who were working in both February 2001 and 2002 and changed jobs during the year, 42% changed industry since February 2001.

Of the 248,700 people who changed their full-time or part-time status, nearly two-thirds (62%) had changed from part-time work at February 2001 to full-time work at February 2002.
Of the people who ceased a job, most did so voluntarily (62%) with 26% of these people doing so to enter retirement, pursue a new business or better job or for family reasons. Almost one-fifth (18%) lost their jobs through retrenchment or redundancy.

Further details can be found in Labour Mobility, Australia, February 2002 (cat. no. 6209.0).